Tag Archives: Counter-Piracy

Current Operations

The Shifting Center of Gravity for Piracy in Africa

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Maritime Criminals in the Niger Delta
                       Maritime Criminals in the Niger Delta

The NGO Oceans Beyond Piracy recently updated their report, The Human Cost of Maritime Piracy, including data from 2012.  Discussing the impact piracy (or more accurately, “maritime crime”) off Somalia or West Africa has had on merchant seaman, the report has received much exposure from the press by pointing out that in 2012 more pirate attacks occurred in West Africa than off Somalia.

The shift of piracy’s center of gravity from the east to west coast of Africa may shed light on more than just the current hotspots for maritime insecurity, but also demonstrate how commonly held assumptions regarding the impact state failure has on maritime security may be overstated or false.  For much of the last decade, the conventional wisdom has been that “failed states” or “ungoverned spaces” are breeding grounds for illicit activities like terrorism, drug trafficking, arms smuggling, and piracy.  However, academics like Stewart Patrick and Ken Menkhaus have argued that illicit actors may in fact find that “weak but functioning” states are more attractive environments to operate in than failed states, as weak states, despite their problems, have the necessary linkages into the global economic system that failed states lack, and that illicit actors need to be able to profit from their activities.

More importantly, it is much more difficult for external actors to interfere in the internal affairs of a weak state than a failed state.  Without a functioning government (excepting the self-declared states of Somaliland and Puntland), there has been nothing to stop foreign intervention in Somalia against terrorists or pirates (such as Ethiopian and Kenyan invasions, occasional raids against pirate camps by Western militaries, and an African Union-sponsored peacekeeping force).  In West Africa, meanwhile, much of the violence has been conducted within the territorial waters of Nigeria or its neighbors, and conducted by Nigeria-based gangs.  While the various Gulf of Guinea states are planning talks to hammer out the details of a regional counter-piracy strategy, it is unlikely that sovereignty-conscious states like Nigeria would be willing to accept outside intervention by Western navies in the region.  Ultimately, there is nothing stopping a foreign power from using military force against pirates in Somalia if they desire, but a similar course of action in Nigeria would be much more complicated by the fact that there is a functioning government in Nigeria, even with Abuja’s somewhat limited ability to assert its authority in the Niger Delta.

Lieutenant Commander Mark Munson is a Naval Intelligence officer currently serving on the OPNAV staff.  He has previously served at Naval Special Warfare Group FOUR, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and onboard USS Essex (LHD 2).  The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official viewpoints or policies of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.

PS:  Oceans Beyond Piracy report is worth a read because it shifts the focus from the typical economic costs of piracy and whether the piracy in Somalia has hurt the bottom line of the maritime industry to the real victims, the poorly-paid merchant seamen who have truly borne the cost of maritime insecurity as piracy has exploded on both the east and west coasts of Africa.

Current Operations

Economics and Somali Piracy

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Somali Pirates
                                                                             Pirates a lá Somali

 

While the consensus seems to be that Somali piracy is in a terminal decline, over the weekend the Washington Post’s Wonkblog highlighted an interesting academic study from last year that attempted to determine the costs of Somali piracy since 2008.  The bottom line, from economists Timothy Besley, Thiemo Fetzer and Hannes Mueller, was that piracy increased the cost for shipping bulk cargo through the region 8%, with a 14% seasonal discount between December-February and June-September when the monsoon causes sea states to be less hospitable to pirates.

Of particular interest is the economist’s attempt to measure how efficient piracy has been as a method of transferring wealth from the rest of the world to Somalia.  According to their analysis, pirates generating a total in $120M in annual ransoms would possibly drive industry to spend up to ten times that amount on insurance and onboard security.  Theoretically, Somalia could get the same amount of money from an .8% tax on charters than the 8% increased costs faced by shippers.

Piracy has driven some economic growth in Somalia, with one study arguing that ransoms received in 2009 were five times greater than the budget of Puntland.  Such development has been uneven however and did not benefit all Somalis. Intriguingly, economic growth and development measured in terms such as construction, urbanization, and light emissions measured through overhead imagery showed significant growth in major Puntland cities like Bossasso, rather than main Puntland pirate bases like Eyl and Hobyo.

Although ransoms as a wealth transfer are a “thought experiment” which the authors don’t necessarily advocate as policy, there is a clear subtext that aid for effective security forces would be a cheaper method to achieve the security needed to eliminate piracy than paying ransoms or funding afloat counter-piracy task forces.  They cite Stig Hansen’s compelling argument that the triggering event for the explosion of piracy in recent years was the Puntland economic crisis in 2008, during which the government of the semi-autonomous region suspended pay to the police and militia responsible for border security.

Of course while a tax on trade to fund a wealth transfer to Somalia may have been a much more efficient way of combating piracy than the current combined approach of naval forces afloat, industry best practices, a Kenyan invasion of Somalia, and the funding of AMISOM troops (in a previous article in Proceedings I vainly attempted to compare the relative costs and benefits of counter-piracy task forces afloat and security forces in Somalia), it does not square with any accepted notion of freedom of navigation in international waters.  While an effective Somali government would certainly have the right to regulate economic activity in its Exclusive Economic Zone (commonly listed narratives for the start of piracy in the region include grassroots local efforts to regulate illegal fishing and toxic waste disposal by foreigners in Somali waters), impeding or taxing commercial shipping traversing international waters adjacent to Somalia would be unacceptable to the international community.

Lieutenant Commander Mark Munson is a Naval Intelligence officer currently serving on the OPNAV staff.  He has previously served at Naval Special Warfare Group FOUR, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and onboard USS Essex (LHD 2).  The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official viewpoints or policies of the Department of Defense or the US Government.

Tactical Concepts

Who Defeated the Somali Pirates? Another Look

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Heading home after another long day at work.
                                         Heading home after a long day at the office.

As observers thankfully have noted, piracy off the coast of Somalia dropped significantly over 2012.  As Mark Munson points out, a variety of factors contributed to this decline.  These included an increase in armed guards aboard commercial vessels, continued international naval patrols in the region, attacks by some of those international naval forces on pirate havens, and operations by the Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF).  

Yet it would be too easy to write off piracy in the area as a dead issue.  Despite some glaring examples to the contrary, pirates are not uniformly stupid, as demonstrated by the $160 million they made in ransom in a single year.  They are capable of adapting to change in their maritime operating environment.  For example, when the world’s navies began patrolling the area, pirates attempted to disguise themselves as innocent fishermen.  International naval forces reacted by conducting more thorough searches and seizures of suspected pirates, who in turn adapted by using motherships to expand their area of operations beyond the patrol areas.  Despite increasing the transaction costs for both the pirates and international naval forces involved in this conflict, this “tit-for-tat” process did not slow or halt the increase in piracy.

Several analysts believe that the increase in armed private security guards aboard commercial ships in the region played a key role in reducing piracy; at least 40% of commercial vessels in the region had armed guards aboard at the beginning of 2012.  Although armed guards did in fact contribute to the drop in piracy, their dampening effect merely shifted the onus back to the pirates to continue measure/counter-measure evolution.  There’s little to stop them from adapting to this tactical change as they adapted to those that came before, for instance by using more personnel to overwhelm ship defenses, or mounting a stabilized light machine gun to deliver greater and more accurate fire against ships.  Rather, it’s two other factors that have been the main cause of the drop in piracy in Somalia:  attacks on pirate safe havens from the offshore EU task force and more operations by a better trained PMPF. 

 Piracy Mar 2011

In May 2012, EU forces attacked the pirate safe haven Haradhere, one of the largest pirate bases in one of Somalia’s notoriously ungovernable regions.  This was the start of the EU’s counter-piracy targeting pirate safe havens with surgical and extremely precise strikes.  It was also a key development in the region as the first strike ashore by any patrolling international naval forces (with the exception of a handful of hostage rescue missions).  By targeting the pirates at their center of gravity, EU forces were able to damage their logistics and raise the cost of doing business, which in turn disrupted their operations. 

However, these strikes have two main shortfalls.  First, they are difficult to conduct at a high tempo because of the time it takes to locate the strongholds, plan the strikes, and carry them out while ensuring minimum collateral damage; being based afloat only lengthens the timeline.  Second, the surgical requirements for the strikes allow pirates to react by surrounding themselves with even more civilians, making the strikes all the more difficult.    

Unlike the EU’s strikes, the PMPF attacks pirate strongholds from land.  Trained initially by Saracen International/Sterling Corporate Services (which was led by Australian Lafras Luitingh, an experienced intelligence officer with from South Africa), the PMPF are arguably one of the most well-trained paramilitary forces north of Mogadishu.  Although they are still categorized as a backwater paramilitary force, Sterling Corporate Services created this simple force that outclasses its pirate adversaries (however due to behind-the-scenes political moves it is unclear who, if anyone, now trains them).  Consequentially, the PMPF has been able to patrol the littorals in Puntland and attack pirate bases.  Although the PMPF lacks the firepower of the EU task force, they are able to permanently station themselves in areas prone to piracy and use their knowledge of the area to recognize and pursue pirates.  Nevertheless, the PMPF’s main weakness is whether they have the capacity to sustain themselves and their capabilities without foreign funding and guidance from their former trainers. 

Applying These Lessons Elsewhere

The fight to stop piracy in Somalia is not over but lessons learned can be applied to other areas, such as the Gulf of Guinea, where piracy is on the rise.  These lessons are that changing the pirate’s operating environment alone will not eliminate piracy, as the pirates can and will adapt accordingly.  Instead, the problem must be solved on shore by going after the pirate center of gravity—their strongholds—to effectively disrupt their operations.  Although offshore attacks against these strongholds can yield some results, developing a disciplined local paramilitary force with greater capabilities than the pirates will disrupt their operations even more.  Creating such a force in a weak or failed state is difficult and is fraught with the danger of backfiring, but as demonstrated by the PMPF, it is not impossible.  Will the U.S. Navy and other international maritime forces pursue these proactive options in future areas where piracy becomes a problem?  Or will costly international task forces reactively patrolling offshore remain the norm?

Bret is a student at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.  The views expressed are solely those of the author.

Capability Analysis

An International Response to Maritime Insecurity in the Gulf of Guinea

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A Movement for the Emapncipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) Fighter
A fighter from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).

The International Crisis Group (ICG) recently released a report* on maritime security challenges in the Gulf of Guinea.  As usual from ICG, the analysis is excellent and informative, with reasonable policy recommendations to address the problems associated with increasing security challenges afloat (piracy, oil theft, smuggling, illegal fishing) in the region.  Unfortunately, there is little chance that the proposed courses of action will be pursued or efforts by regional states or organizations will be up to addressing these challenges.

What ICG calls “piracy” (beyond the traditional legal scope)  is increasing…42 attacks, 168 hostages kidnapped, and 4 deaths between January and September of 2012.  What had been primarily a problem in Nigeria’s Niger Delta has expanded, with attacks or raids in neighboring Benin, Togo, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea since 2009.  In an accompanying Op-ed at Foreign Policy, ICG’s Thierry Vircoulon argues that maritime security in West Africa is important, both to the states in the region that want to benefit by tapping into their national resources, and the rest of the world that increasingly depends on oil from the region (40% of Europe’s oil is imported from the Gulf of Guinea, and 29% of the U.S.’s).

The ICG’s first recommendation is to improve the economy in the coastal regions of the Gulf, thereby diminishing the need for locals to pursue illicit activities afloat as a livelihood. Unfortunately, precedents for Nigerian economic policies in the Niger Delta do not make it seem likely that countries in the region will begin to “boost job creation along the coast, in particular by protecting artisanal fishing, stimulating the local fish-processing industry, providing professional training for vulnerable sectors of the population” any time soon.

The second set of recommendations entail improved maritime security forces for the region.  Once again, this is a laudable goal, but it’s unclear who would pay for expanded and better-trained navies and coast guards for at least half-a-dozen African states.  Even factoring in potential aid from the U.S., Europe, or China it’s not clear how a “donated” navy would be able to be enough of an effective deterrent against local pirates and criminals.

The third set of recommendations revolve around establishing bilateral and regional frameworks for combined afloat operations.  Whether in the context of ECCAS (Economic Community of Central African States) and ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States), combined patrols between states such as Nigeria and neighbors such as Benin and Cameroon, or improved intelligence sharing relationships, these types of operations would be essential to stopping the current insecurity.

There are numerous challenges to implementing this sort of regional cooperation. however.  First, “maritime cooperation is still in its infancy and is hampered by political tensions and distrust of neighbouring states toward Nigeria.”  Nigeria and Benin have begun to cooperate and conduct combined patrols, with Operation Prosperity starting in 2011.  However, Benin has virtually no Navy, Coast Guard, or maritime security force.  According to Janes, Benin’s Navy consists of three patrol craft, but one vessel dates from the late 1980s and isn’t believed to be operational, and the current status of the other two donated by China in 2000 is unclear.  Thus Nigeria bears the brunt of responsibility for patrolling Benin’s waters, which is good in the sense that they now have the authority to pursue criminals operating there, but bad in the sense that they have in the past shown limited ability to control illicit actors in their own waters, let alone next door.

The shortcomings of these proposed solutions point to one of the biggest problems with addressing maritime security challenges in West Africa as “piracy,” in that much of this criminal activity isn’t piracy at all.  Much occurs within the various states’ territorial waters, while under the traditional definition per international law, piracy occurs in international waters.  In these instances, the problem is one of criminals based in one state traveling to the territorial waters of a neighboring country to commit crimes afloat.  The difficulty isn’t that these acts occur on the high seas where no one has jurisdiction, but rather, because they happen in someone else’s jurisdiction.  A partnership where Nigerian criminals on the water can be pursued by effective maritime security forces across borders is essential, but seems unlikely unless an international sense of urgency increases.

Lieutenant Commander Mark Munson is a Naval Intelligence officer currently serving on the OPNAV staff.  He has previously served at Naval Special Warfare Group FOUR, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and onboard USS Essex (LHD 2).  The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official viewpoints or policies of the Department of Defense or the US Government.

*Although this link is a summary, the actual full report is in French, the promised English version has yet to be published

* UPDATE: ICG has posted the English translation of the full report.